How Much Does it Cost to Launch an ICO?
Initial Coin Offering has become one of those Blockchain development services that needs no introduction. What started with a sea-full of doubts has now become one of the most preferred modes of raising funds in the present time.
Even amidst the several stories of failure, ICOs have been able to show their worth in the market.
Let us look at the present state of the ICO Market –
The amount of money that businesses have been able to generate from ICOs are on a constant rise and so are the success stories of Blockchain startups that have relied on the fund-raising medium after learning how to launch an ICO. Growth tangent that the ICO market is presently on has managed to swap the question – What is ICO with What is the Cost to Launch an ICO.
[In case you are one of those entrepreneurs who are yet to warm up to the idea of Blockchain, head on to Appinventiv’s Blockchain Guide for Entrepreneurs]
To give you a rough estimate, the total cost to launch an ICO can vary between $40,000 to $200,000. The overall prices can further increase or decrease based on the hourly rates of the hired blockchain development organization as well as other processes like time and manpower required to launch the website, create the cryptocurrency wallet, handle the whitepapers, etc.
Our intent today is to discuss all these factors in detail that can help you determine the costs better and make efficient budgetary ICO launch decisions. So, without any momentarily delay, let us get straight to the part where we answer how much an ICO costs, divided among the different steps, i.e. ICO Cost breakdown.
ICO Service-Wise Cost Demarcation
Launching an ICO is a complicated process but getting an insight into the various factors that affect the overall costs can help you make better financial judgements. Dedicated blockchain app development experts can help you understand the costs better, while offering support with the legal constraints required for launching a successful ICO.
ICO Consultation
ICO Consultation, often ignored in the name of obviousness, can be a deal breaker for a number of entrepreneurs. In fact, the service alone can be one of the biggest contributory factors behind the failure of the whole process.
There are a number of things that you as an entrepreneur planning to launch an ICO have to keep into consideration. Things that only surface when you sit with a company that offers ICO services.
There are a number of things that you get an idea of when you talk to them, which ultimately helps you not just approach ICO events with greater preparation and confidence but also enter the Blockchain industry as a whole with complete information about the sector.
Here are the sub-services that are generally covered under ICO consultancy offered by ICO Companies–
- Planning of the ICO
- White Paper Drafting
- Token Creation and Marketing
- Website Development
- ICO Listing Process
- Post Launch Activities
The minimum cost of ICO consultation service comes out to be a minimum of $8,000 to $15,000.
Whitepaper Drafting and Auditing
Having a well-designed whitepaper can be the ultimate deciding factor in determining an ICO launch costs and its success. It is one of the essentials of launching an ICO. A whitepaper, when drafted with much detail, helps in making your investors understand what the project is about – what it would entail, how it would benefit them, and the general scope that it carries.
The contents of your whitepaper are what would define how practical your idea is, the problems it would solve, and how the industry that you are planning to decentralize would actually benefit from Blockchain.
Now, it is quite possible that you would have created a whitepaper yourself but it is pretty easy to overlook some of the most important considerations that you should otherwise pay attention to – something that your team of partnered Whitepaper creation specialists can help you with.
The ICO cost related to Whitepaper Drafting and Auditing across various ICO companies usually comes out to be in the starting cost of $8,000 to $20,000.
Blockchain development
The next part of how to launch an ICO is to develop a Blockchain solution. There are a number of subsets in the Blockchain development umbrella as well – Token Creation, ICO Smart Contracts, MVP, etc.
While the Blockchain development part of the ICO starts with the creation of a token or cryptocurrency that is then given to the investors in return for their investment in the ICO, it is also a mandate that you create an MVP of the Blockchain solution that would give a clear idea of how the ecosystem would work.
[Bonus Read: What is Blockchain-as-a-Service & its Business Benefits?]
Also, at this stage, it is very important that you invest in Smart Contract development as well, as any sound blockchain development company would advise you. The contract would help in keeping the investors’ best interest met. Having it in place would give them the mental peace that they received tokens in return for the money (Fiat or cryptocurrency) that they put in your business.
[Also Read: What are Smart Contracts and Their Applications]
Now ensuring that the token, smart contract and the MVP are hack-proof, real-time and scalable would call for a team of experts who have a complete in-depth idea of how each of the Blockchain solutions. You will need a reputed blockchain development firm’s help to ensure that the ecosystem you are getting made has no loophole for any hacker to enter.
The cruciality of this stage makes Blockchain development part of ICO one of the most expensive services. The starting ICO price cost range for the ICO development of different dSolutions with a dedicated ICO development company would come out to be $15,000 to $50,000.
ICO Website
A website that you provide to launch and then promote your ICO from is another most important factor of the whole fundraising process. The website would not just contain the details of your idea, offering, and the whitepaper, it will also be the first platform that the investors will visit to know about your project.
In fact, there are a number of entrepreneurs who conduct the whole fund collection and token distribution process from their website itself, making it all the more important to ensure that the website design is seamless and easy to flow along with making sure that the whole ICO development is done in a way that the website is hack proof and is ready to hold the inflow of traffic in real-time when the ICO goes live.
Designing and development of an efficient ICO website as this will come with a starting ICO price of around $15,000 to $25,000. A professional ICO development company can further offer you exact rates based on your requirements.
Cryptocurrency wallet
Although not a mandate, having a cryptocurrency wallet in place comes in very handy for your investors to save all their cryptocurrencies together. Doing this helps them with a convenient platform where they can easily get a look into how much cryptocurrencies they carry and afford to invest.
This added feature that enhances your offering in the eyes of the investors can cost somewhere around the starting price of $15,000 to $60,000.
[Bonus Read: How Much Does It Cost to Make A Crypto Wallet App on Blockchain?]
Let us now summarize how much does it cost to launch an ICO as per the various deciding factors:
| ICO Services | Estimated Cost |
|---|---|
| ICO Consultation | $8,000 to $15,000 |
| White Paper Drafting and Auditing | $8,000 to $20,000 |
| Blockchain Development | $15,000 to $50,000 |
| ICO Website | $15,000 to $25,000 |
| Cryptocurrency Wallet | $15,000 to $60,000 |
With the ICO rates offered by ICO companies now attended to, it is now time to look at the technology stacks that are deemed ideal for ICO development and to launch an ICO successfully in the market –
Technology Stack That Backs Successful ICO Launch
The technology stack required to launch an ICO is one of the major factors that can affect the overall cost. Integrating the various technologies and tools mentioned below requires professional expertise which comes at a cost.
Here are the various tools and technologies required to successfully launch an ICO. Leveraging the power of Ethereum can further help you understand digital assets transaction seamlessly while gain validation for smart contracts.
Now that we have looked at the technology stack that must be used for the ICO launch platform, the next part is to look at the other important contributing factors.
How Team Size Affects the Cost of Raising Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)
Next to knowing the technology stack that comes in handy in all the different processes that are involved between ICO Consultancy and ICO Website Design and Development is the ideal team size that would make it all possible with ease and within time for starting an ICO.
Let us start with the manpower required for the ICO launch platform. Usually, the team size required for starting an ICO is made up of 8 to 12 professionals working as – Business Analyst, Designers, Backend & Frontend Developers, QA testers, and project manager.
Next, although like the cost of launching an ICO element which takes up multiple factors to become definite, stating a time range is also difficult but usually it takes somewhere around four to 10 months to complete the preparation of the ICO and then another one to two months to launch and market your ICO, which then usually stays live in the market for investors to put their money in for somewhere around two to three months.
Time Frame for a Successful ICO Launch
| Process | Time Frame |
|---|---|
| ICO Preparation | 4 to 10 months |
| ICO Launch and Market | 1 to 2 months |
| ICO Live in the Market for Investment | 2 months to 3 months |
The last section of the trio – How much does it cost to launch an ICO, while already answered above, process demarcation wise, contains 1 more important aspect to be considered – How much does it cost to list an ICO token in the crypto exchange platforms? Now, because the industry is divided among small, medium, and large lists of cryptocurrency exchanges, the ICO listing fees also automatically differ between them. It can buy anything from tens of cryptocoins to millions of dollars to get listed and then maintain the position.
With this, we have now several important things to get you started with the ICO world – The state of ICO market, process wise answer to what is the rate for ICO launch platform, and lastly the must help to know things like the time it takes to launch an ICO, team size that is required to get the ICO launched, and an idea into listing an ICO token in the crypto exchange platforms.
The last part that is left for you to know to not just launch a successful ICO but also emerge as a leader is knowing the challenges that you might face when it comes to launching an ICO successfully in the market and then creating a complete Blockchain ecosystem at the back of it.
Let us look at some of those challenges that you might come across and the solutions that our ICO development company and Blockchain App Developers have to offer on them.
Challenges Associated with Launching a Successful ICO
1. Justifying the investors’ benefit
One of the biggest challenges associated with launching an ICO and getting big investors to buy ICO tokens in the project calls for a detailed justification of how your proposed token would move in the economy, the actual issues your Blockchain solution would solve, etc.
Grasping it, in turn, would require you to ensure that the future you have thought for your cryptocoin and the project in general is actually something that holds the potential to be of real value in the real world. Doing this is not easy. It would require you to do a lot of groundwork before you enter the market with a decentralized solution to their problem.
2. Proving Yours to be a Non-Fraudulent Brand
The one thing growing alongside the growing entrants in the ICO market is hoaxes and businesses entering the market with a glorious world changing idea that ultimately proves to be nothing more than a phishing medium to get a hold of millions of dollars and flea. And the present state of fake ICOs running in the market being in millions and billion dollars valuations has made the investors all the more careful about who they entertain to even listen to or open the website to buy ICO tokens.
Now, proving yourself to be genuine can be a frustrating task. But, our team of ICO developers have cracked it. Here is what we do to prove the genuinity of our clients’ ICO.
Our team, after working on the design and launching over 25 successful ICOs understand what the red flags are and with that understanding we prepare our clients.
- We never say that the cryptocoin’s value will double in a matter of a few days.
- We ensure that there is a team whose name and face goes on the ICO website and then we make sure that those members are actually knowledgeable Blockchain experts.
- We prepare the whitepaper and website in a way that all the information in both the places are complete and 100% in-depth.
- We never propose an open-source code. We also make sure that the repositories like Sourceforge or GitHub are complete and have a complete line of codes.
3. Securing the Whole ICO Round
The future of the ICO market, even if slightly fluctuating, is only because of the fact that the causes of security breaches and hoaxes are at an all time high. The modern day hackers have become so smart that they require only a smarter development team to keep at bay.
- We use two-factor authentication
- We verify the code and terms and conditions of the smart contract multiple times during and after ICO launch
- We make SSL encryption mandatory in the website
These are just a few ways how Appinventiv, a reputed Blockchain development Company, ensures that your ICO round, process after process, is 100% secure and the possibility of it getting attacked is negative.
Final Note
As revealed earlier, the overall cost to launch an ICO varies between $40,000 to $200,000. Furthermore, the prices for successfully launching an ICO depends on various factors that we have discussed in detail above. It is advisable to understand that only hard-wired blockchain developers can offer you the liberty to write efficient whitepapers, develop a robust crypto wallet and successfully launch a website for launching the ICO.
Appinventiv has a dedicated team for developing cryptocurrency projects. Our expert blockchain developers are pioneers in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and can help you with your custom project requirements.
We hope our article helped you to gain some perspective and understanding of ICO. In case you still have some questions, contact us for expert advice. We will guide you through the process and help you get started.
FAQs
Q. What are the necessary steps to write a successful whitepaper?
A. A whitepaper is a document that features all the necessary information about your project and explains the problem that is to be solved. Here are some details your whitepaper must include:
- Market research
- Product Roadmap
- How tokenization solves the problem at hand
- Team Overview
- Token generation model details
- Details of distribution of ICO token
- Timeline and milestones of the ICO project
Q. How do I launch an ICO?
A. Here are a few necessary steps to launch a successful ICO:
- Devise a product idea that needs an ICO
- Carry out a thorough market research and understand your competitors
- Sort out the legal technicalities as per your residing country
- Create an ICO token
- Write a whitepaper
- Launch your website
Q. How much time does it take to launch an ICO?
A. Launching an ICO is a complicated process and a dedicated blockchain development company can help you put things into perspective while offering you a time frame of development based on your custom requirements.
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